Data and Code for: The Changing Firm and Country Boundaries of US Manufacturers in Global Value Chains

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Teresa Fort, Dartmouth

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Project Citation:

Fort, Teresa. Data and Code for: The Changing Firm and Country Boundaries of US Manufacturers in Global Value Chains. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2023. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2023-09-20. https://doi.org/10.3886/E192222V1

Project Description

Summary: This paper documents how US firms organize goods production across firm and country boundaries. Most US firms that perform physical transformation tasks in-house using foreign manufacturing plants in 2007 also own US manufacturing plants; moreover manufacturing comprises their main domestic activity. By contrast, “factoryless goods producers” outsource all physical transformation tasks to arm's-length contractors, focusing their in-house efforts on design and marketing. This distinct firm type is missing from standard analyses of manufacturing, growing in importance, and increasingly reliant on foreign suppliers. Physical transformation “within-the-firm” thus coincides with substantial physical transformation “within-the-country,” whereas its performance “outside-the-firm” often also implies “outside-the-country.” Despite these differences, factoryless goods producers and firms with foreign and domestic manufacturing plants both employ relatively high shares of US knowledge workers. These patterns call for new models and data to capture the potential for foreign production to support domestic innovation, which US firms leverage around the world.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: offshoring; foreign direct investment ; factoryless goods producers

JEL Classification:
F14 Empirical Studies of Trade
L23 Organization of Production

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 1/1/1992 – 12/31/2017 (US data on global manufacturing firms)

Universe: There are two data sources in the paper:

1. All US firms that manufacture anywhere in the world in 2007.

2. Firms with wholesale establishments in 2017 that do not have any US manufacturing plants, and that respond to the 2017 Census of Wholesale trade Special Inquiry questions. These firms are followed back in time to 1992.

Data Type(s): administrative records data; census/enumeration data; survey data

Methodology

Response Rate: See appendix tables.

Sampling: See appendix.

Data Source: US Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis

Collection Mode(s): other

Scales: NA

Weights: None used

Unit(s) of Observation: see tables

Geographic Unit: countries

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Published Versions

V1 [2023-09-20]

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